See gifts given to California state leaders, aides

Meet the members of the California Fair Political Practices Commission

The California Fair Political Practices Commission is charged with enforcing the state’s laws on campaign finance, conflicts of interest, lobbying and governmental ethics. The five-member board currently has one vacancy.
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The California Fair Political Practices Commission is charged with enforcing the state’s laws on campaign finance, conflicts of interest, lobbying and governmental ethics. The five-member board currently has one vacancy.
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Corporations and interest groups have given California leaders and their aides tens of thousands of gifts worth more than $7 million since 2000, including more than $400,000 in gifts given during 2018, according to a Bee review of state data.

Among the gifts given since 2000:

▪ More than $33,000 in theme park tickets from the Walt Disney Company.

▪ More than $200,000 in tickets to see the Sacramento Kings.

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Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill in 2014 that would have restricted the number of gifts legislators and other state leaders could receive from lobbyists and the companies that employ them. In vetoing that bill, he wrote, “proper disclosure, as already provided by law, should be sufficient to guard against undue influence.”

This database shows every gift given to state leaders and their aides since 2000. It is drawn from California’s unwieldy and hard-to-search Cal-Access database. If you are keenly interested in a particular gift, click “source” after getting your results to see the lobbyist filing that shows the gift.

For most complete results, enter partial name of official or corporation. Database does not include gifts from organizations or individuals that don’t employ lobbyists; for instance, some nonprofits without lobbyists pay directly for legislators to travel to conferences. Some corporations give gifts directly to relatives of a leader, possibly to avoid triggering gift limits to the leader -- a last name search will generally show those gifts. Misspelling and spelling variations in the data, which are submitted by lobbyists under disclosure laws, are common. Some dates are approximate. If keenly interested in a particular gift, click “source” after getting your results to see if there are any footnotes related to the gift. Some corporations split the cost of gifts, but each report the full cost to the state. If you see multiple gifts of the same price and date but from different entities, it’s likely that it’s one gift from multiple sources.